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Comment by bruceb | Hacker News Reader

This article is very light on actual stats and heavy on random opinion. The writer resorts to laundering her opinion via the other people's quotes instead of hard facts

The forms for marriage and fiance visas for the US are readily available for anyone to check:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat...

"Throughout the process, the couples — and the noncitizens in particular — have little to no expectation of privacy. The noncitizens submit bank statements, detailed medical records (including regarding their sexual and mental health), criminal history, and biometric information."

Yes unsurprisingly a country wants to do basic background checks on people it is making permanent residents and then citizens.

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> Yes unsurprisingly a country wants to do basic background checks on people it is making permanent residents and then citizens.

This will not stop the worst from coming, at best; but might discourage the best from doing it. It’s stupid and inhuman.

It clearly doesn't. What specifically in the background check requirements is inhuman?

Detailed financial records and the sex+mental health history detail.

Here are the docs required: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat...

Nowhere are questions about the couple's sex life asked about. The only question is if the person has been a sex worker (which is good to know to see if the person is being sex trafficked). They are asked about criminal record, sold drugs, or been a terrorist. Yes the person does a medical exam. The person does list their assets and work history.

America is actually pretty lax when it comes to financial support. The person petitioning for their spouse or would be spouse only has to earn 125% of the fed poverty line, that is less than $25k a year or about $12 an hour.

Nothing is inhuman in the questions asked and hardly different than what most other countries ask for. But this doesn't make for a good click-bait story, so some 'journalists' need to make vague insinuations to the contrary.

The system can be improved for sure but so much of what is alluded to just isn't accurate.

I had lived in the US for 7 years on visas before I could apply for a green card. It was only that point that the system asked for a medical to get inoculated and check if I had any communicable diseases like HIV or TB. That definitely seemed inhuman.

My own doctor couldn't do it, and previous medicals didn't count. I'd already had 7 years to transmit those diseases; a test prior to moving to the US would have made more sense. And with all of that, testing positive wouldn't even disqualify me, I'd just have to get treatment ... it just seems so laughably idiotic. Putting people through a Kafka-esque routine because immigration politics have been dysfunctional for half a century.

The tests you're describing are for immigrant visas (Green Card IS a visa).

Non-immigrant visas don't require those tests. Why? I don't know. Clearly there are differences that don't make sense, but I'm assuming it's more related to how the law worked out in the end vs actual malice.

Also, a lot of these GC medical questionnaires more focused on people bringing in family members from oversees (as in sponsor them), and much less for people converting from a non-immigrant visa to an immigrant one.

The answer to why is racism. The immigration rules in US are designed in a similar way to previous black voter literacy rules. A lot of leeway for the bureaucrat to reject, a lot of unnecessary burden of proof on the applicant also to make it easy to miss the deadlines and introduce a cost barrier. (No, these tests are not free.)

I don't know. As a non-US Citizen it a privilege to be in the USA. Not a right. As such they are well within their rights to only allow smart people in. Countries have sovereignty.

An illiterate white person would have exactly the same problem as what you describe.

Brush up on the history of those racist literacy tests please. They were not actually testing literacy.

Likewise this immigration law is not about letting people in or not, that's the visa which is much more lax. And often follows another more temporary visa.

Benefits of being a US citizen are some, but not really enough in comparison to just being in the US which needs only the visa. (Especially business/employee visa.)

It's not a test for intelligence either, unless you explain to me how you need to be smart to be in a relationship. Stable employment (of one of the partners) is something, I guess, if it's checked, but that's a different immigration visa that is quite limited. The check for language is done at visa application... (See point of people already having a previous visa, usually.)

> An illiterate white person would have exactly the same problem as what you describe.

The standard for the "literacy tests" was roughly that you were exempt if your pre-1861 ancestors were allowed to vote.

Edit to add: The test questions were along the lines of "Name all of the judges in your state's circuit court" or [0]; note that both selecting the passage and judging the answers was left to the county registrar, and that it was left to their discretion whether it was necessary to administer the test to any given individual.

[0] https://www.crmvet.org/docs/550300_wcdc_vote.pdf

Surely it may not stop some criminals mastermind, but most criminals are idiots with bad impulse control. I'd wager that many are caught by this process

Actual criminals would enter fully illegally (rarest), use only a temporary visa (even long term business), or use cooperative approved US citizens. So that is a rather bad reason to gate immigration.

Medical record is out of question in most countries.

The UK one for instance: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Okay, but America accepts more immigrants than any other country by orders of magnitude. That’s always forgotten whenever this discussion is brought up.

Why do people repeat this canard? I saw it on HN yesterday.

Meanwhile, after ignoring very small countries, countries like Australia and Switzerland have twice the percentage (about 30%) of immigrant residents than the USA, (about 15% — even Germany has more).

The US is a large country so the absolute number is higher than, say, Switzerland, but not by orders of magnitude.

Yes, but by immigrants as a fraction of population, the US doesn't score especially high. Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Israel, Canada, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Ireland, Belgium and Norway all have a higher fraction of the population being immigrants, amongst many more.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...

I'm not really interested in total number of immigrants currently in place, rather, the immigration by year (particularly the current year). Examining that required that we analyze the choices of past administrations and pore through historical events that may have affected immigration. It's much more useful, in my opinion, to look at how the choices governments are making today are affecting their immigration numbers today.

You're not wrong that the numbers on immigration percentages are a bit skewed but that's not a debate that I find worthwhile.

France isn't far in line in regards of immigrant proportions, and they also don't request health records for vetting purposes.

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F34708/...

America isn't in some super exceptional situation where human rights need to be routinely trampled to preserve the nation.

Australia routinely rejects people if it's thought they'll be a burden on the medical system.

Depression… mental health… Australia requires you to report if you ever saw a shrink. I think it was 10 years of medical records. What really sucks too, is that you tend to apply through your company, so you’re sending your company’s lawyer all these documents to submit on your behalf. And you know full well the company is probably getting a summary report. I found it so cruel that they make it harder to get a visa if you have a history of depression. Like plenty of people get depressed but don’t have a ton of visible symptoms… soldier on. But it’s fine if you just drink, but if you tried to get help they penalize you for speaking with a therapist.

My father in law applied for a visa to come to Australia about a decade ago. As part of this he had to do a medical checkup, and this caught some cancer that he didn’t know he had. Luckily this was early on, and after a few rounds of surgery he was in remission.

If he hadn’t applied for the visa at that time, it’s almost certain he wouldn’t have caught it and wouldn’t be alive today.

He had no trouble getting approved for the visa - we were sponsoring him so we had already signed an agreement saying that we would pay for any government benefits he might receive over the next 10 years. So I don’t think people in this particular visa situation can be a burden on the system.

But this might not be how every visa in Australia works, I’ve got no experience beyond that.

When a relative of mine did a “tour of Europe” in the 1960s, they faced invasive questions about their health. Immigration straight up said, “We think you’re trying to mooch off the NHS.”

I don't see how the forms for visas contradict anything in the story. It's not about what the minimum requirement is to apply.

> Yes unsurprisingly a country wants to do basic background checks on people it is making permanent residents and then citizens.

I would point out that if you're native born, the government generally considers this stuff private and makes an effort to protect it (one exception: biometric information is collected from some government employees).

"Give me your tired, your poor, your bank statements, your sexual proclivities, your vial of saliva, perhaps a pantone swatch best describing your hue in the winter."

No where is sexual proclivities asked for. Ellis island immigration also rejected people on medical ground.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122120744/https://www.sfchr...

Whole long article in which no where were perspective immigrants asked about their sexual behavior.

I can't aid your comprehension. Good luck navigating life, top G.

You seem not to be able to supply any content from the article you posted that directly supports your claim.

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